the breif history of melmi and it's partners
The interchange project MELMI (Melbourne-Milan) is a bridge between Italy and Australia, with the intent to share experiences, best practices and innovative approaches to those issues related to urban accessibility and social inclusion of people with pshyco-physical disabilities.
The 1st edition was in the spring 2011. A group of 18 people from Melbourne, 10 young disabled, teachers, pedagogues and some representatives of the City of Melbourne, visited Milan to set a comparative study on the accessibility of public spaces, parks, recreational areas and transport infrastructures. On the October 2012, an Italian delegation was hosted in Melbourne, carring on the comparative experiment. The Melmi project has so far seen four cultural exchanges between Italy and Australia. These exchanges wouldn't have happened without the generous individuals and organisations who donate their time, money and resources into the Melmi project. Read below information on all of the different organisations who have involved in the Melmi project. |
Athla
Atlha was the original driving force for the development of the MelMi project. Lino Brundo was a crazy eccentric that believed people with disabilities deserved the same opportunities as everyone else. They started in 1983 primarily as a recreation service offering activities and support for people in their free time. In the 1990s they were given an old deserted farmhouse in the middle of a huge park. They have renovated this and built a head quarters which serves as a home for 6 people, an office, and a venue for activities for the whole community. This is the Cascina - our home whilst in Milan. Atlha receive no recurrent government funding and have built their service through donations, fundraising and one off grants. They primarily run through volunteers and the few paid staff have 2nd jobs just to survive. It is a service built on passion, human rights and a love of people. Unfortunately Lino passed away in January 2012 but his legacy survives, now driven by Fabiola and others determined to see Lino's work is continued.
So MelMi started by Lino turning up in Melbourne and stating that he wants to build a bridge between Australia and Italy to share information and cultural activities for people with disabilities. As Lino had only half a hand on one side the Melbourne City Council in their wisdom sent him to Aussie Hands Inc. |
Aussie hands
Aussie Hands is a tiny self help group for families who have a person with comprised hand function. Primarily they provide advise to families about aids and equipment for use in schools. It is a totally voluntary organization. To their credit they said OK let's see what can happen. It was their interest and possibly Lino refusing to hear no, that started the project. Aussie Hands became the ground zero for the project and stood up when Lino announced he was bringing 20 people from Italy for a cultural exchange. They have subsequently pulled out of the project due to a lack of time and resources.
But Lino was not finished - he started to leverage the fact that Melbourne and Milan were sister cities and was lobbying hard to get the two groups involved. |
Melbourne city council
Melbourne City Council got involved through the Community Support department and the project was led by Vicki Feratopolous and their International relations department. The council has provided the spine of the project in Melbourne and have dealt with the protocol, politics and administration for the project very effectively. Impressively for a very bureaucratic organization Vicki has been able to keep the focus on the actual purpose - a cultural experience for people with disabilities. They have also been a key to bringing other partners to the project. The actual elected officials have also been very supportive particularly when they hosted a dinner after the first trip.
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Italian Institute of Culture (Melbourne)
Italian Chamber of Commerce
The ICC's involvement in MelMi has been driven by a man called Luca and he has been a great supporter of the project. Luca travels regularly to Milan and has built contacts for the MelMi project through his work. The relationship between the Australian Commissioner in Milan and MelMi was part due to his work.
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Milan City Council
Italian politics seems somewhat complicated so we are never sure what is going on. Two years ago we were in Milan as the election was on so suddenly they were a little more interested. There was this meeting when they boasted of giving free tickets to the circus. Lino went ballistic at them at this meeting - Chris D was going ohh angry. Apparently people with disabilities were called clown like and he was suggesting they were perpetuating the myth. Anyway that conservative government got voted out (yay!) and the socialists got in. Since then the council has been a little more progressive and have said they are ready to formalize the MelMi agreement. The wheels of Italian politics move slow though so it's still in the process.
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Non melmi members
Central to the whole success at getting MelMi off the ground were two women of Italian background. Cinzia and Nadia were the ones responsible for getting more agencies involved in the project. Cinzia was an artist doing some work with Bailey House and Nadia Lazzari had a daughter who always wanted to travel and was involved with Interchange Outer east for many years. Once Lino announced he was bringing a group to Australia these two jumped in and volunteered to work and dragged Bayley House and Interchange into the process. They worked out the program organized the agencies to provide assistance and it was off and running.
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Bayley House
Bayley House has been around for 60 years providing day services and residential support from their base in Brighton. They were willing to get involved from the start and they have stayed involved for the 4 exchanges to date. They are for now unsure about their future in regards to MelMi so we will wait and see. |